How do I make an opening & closing shot open & close like an eye?
 

I'm curious about this. I was watching a couple of music videos. (Don't remember which ones, but I think you guys know what I'm asking here.

Let's say when the video starts it's a black screen, but the shot opens up as if a person is waking up in the morning opening his/her eyes slowly. (I don't mean the picture getting blurry.)


How do I do this is Premiere Pro 2.0? Is it a transition or do keframes play a part in it?

You would make an upper and a lower eyelid in Photoshop, then animate them. The top lid goes up and the bottom lid down. Or, even better. You animate masks in After Effects so that the curve of the eyelids are maintained more realistically.

Or you shop for a transition that does it.

I did this a while back in a quick short we made for a 1 minute competition. I had to large circle graphics (or the same one duped and flipped). I keyframed the blurring in /out and added a fade to/from black with it. I then keyframed the position of the other two layers sliding opposite one another (one up, one down) and set their composite modes to screen (white is invisible) and blurrred those two layers slightly:

http://yafiunderground.com/Video/Lucidity.mov

I shot, directed and edited this one.